AUDIO: Hitch Drops By the Tex and Jinx Show

Rare recording catches a very relaxed Hitchcock in this never-before-broadcast radio episode.

This audio material is the property of Luke Gaines.

WHILE BROWSING AROUND SOUTH CONGRESS BOOKS in Austin, Texas, Ana Roland spotted a volume on The Master that she didn’t own—Tom Ryall’s Alfred Hitchcock & the British Cinema. When she presented it at checkout, the man running the cash register glanced at the cover. He paused. And then he did something extraordinary in these often un-neighborly times: he struck up a conversation. Specifically, he mentioned that he had a personal connection to the man on the cover. Sort of.

That man, Luke Gaines, had a grandfather, James Gaines, who, back in the heyday of radio—the 1940s through the 60s—had been a Vice President of NBC. Among other duties, he was a producer of the very first husband-and wife morning talk show, the Tex and Jinx Show. Broadcasting from Peacock Alley at the Waldorf-Astoria, celebrity guests would drop in for a little chit-chat and they would occasionally take a break for the news. In 1955 the duo was also doing evening shows. On one such occasion, January 18, Alfred Hitchcock stopped by, along with Laraine Day (Foreign Correspondent, 1940). Banter ensued. Hitch made a few of his… well… signature jokes. And a record-cutter was engraving it all on a vinyl platter. However, so the story goes, thanks to Hitchcock’s not-ready-for-the-whole-family humor, the show never aired.

That record ended up in the James Gaines’ attic, where it bided its time in humidity- and climate-controlled comfort. When he passed away, it landed in the hands of his grandson, Luke and waited a bit longer for the moment when Ana might stop by a certain bookstore, with a certain book, to help it come out of hiding. That recording is captured on video here and made public for the first time ever.

Many thanks to Luke Gaines for sharing this time capsule, and for Ana Roland for arranging for it to be digitized and made available here.